Rough Around the Edges
by Celrevia
Summary: In which Niwa Daisuke and Hiwatari Satoshi have always been the odd pair out, in regards to a rather strange and often confusing friendship, and winter is always a time to reflect.


Rough Around the Edges

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_No one knows how their first real friendships really starts. It's always the bits afterwards that piece together the history of two people. The first look, the first touch, the first laugh, is always a little shaky as far as memories go and after days, to months, to years, the story changes and warps and how one person suddenly became the friend of another is lost in something much more complicated._

_To tell the truth, the rather odd friendship of one Niwa Daisuke and Hiwatari Satoshi started before their births and never really ended, even though there were lots of nicks and scraps and being tossed into cement-surfaces._

_As individuals they were odd, considering that Hiwatari Satoshi was a child prodigy and possibly could have been the most boring person in the world if he wasn't cursed with a rather homicidal not-angelic-creature-despite-appearances-otherwise, and Niwa Daisuke, well, Daisuke wanted to be the most boring person in the world but had a rather unlucky gift for turning into a rather beautiful smiling-demon who made young girls swoon quite often and with much gusto._

_These odd kids, combined, made for a rather interesting progression of events in the great cosmos that was the Eternal Wheel of Life._

_Their friendship was one about struggle, about hardships, and about, most importantly, stealing a lot of shit and trying not to get caught._

---

Hiwatari Satoshi did not have much to say about wintertime except that he especially hated the cold. And Dark Mousy's fangirls. And incompetent coworkers.

He did not feel festive. Or cheerful. Or even remotely interested in anything.

He couldn't, especially considering how much paperwork he had to do on a nightly basis when the wintertime came (as it was a most opportune time for things to be burglarized, often right before his very eyes).

He had, on more than one occasion, thought about investing in becoming an alcoholic, or take to smoking, in hopes of slowly but methodically ending the painfully depressing monotony, punctuated occasionally by attempting to catch Niwa, that was his life.

He figured, in a way, that he hated just about everyone and everything when it came to the jolly festivities that abounded during the winter, which was all well and good considering that he spent about half his winter under or on top of museum roofs waiting for something to be stolen so he could crack his skull on concrete when he tussled with a leather-clad phantom thief.

The only thing that he didn't completely hate with a passion was the occasional delicacy known as the Chinese meatbun, pork being his sort-of-favorite, on a chilly day. The rather eager face of one Niwa Daisuke -- which tended to pop up the morning after an especially rough spar bearing gifts like some tiny, stick-thin (though Lord knows he should be talking), commercialist Santa-figure with the most despairingly apologetic puppy-dog look -- came at a third, right behind nights where he did not have to listen to Saehara (the senior) talk about whatever Saehara talked about that he spent a great time ignoring through mantras and sheer will.

Niwa, unlike the other two things that he did not completely hate, was a constant problem because he tended to think that what Hiwatari Satoshi really needed was a tin of candied fruit slices, or a box of Belgium chocolates, or a striped scarf, or whatever was in the bright red box sitting on his coffee table that seemed to exude Niwa-ness to a sickening level.

Niwa could at least have the decency to leave him to brood darkly while listening to the scraping puttering sounds of his dying fax machine, enveloped in the synthetic glow of his laptop.

Bah. Humbug.

---

Daisuke always felt rather guilty when winter came.

Well, guilty and slightly horrified because he was the one that had the burden of dragging With out from behind the TV (good lord knows how one rabbit-thing managed to wind himself up in all those wires) for the long, cold, flight to various local museums. The point being that whenever winter came, he felt really guilty, and rather sorry, for and about Hiwatari-kun, who was always at the scene of whatever soon-to-be crime at least two hours before Daisuke got there himself (often before Dark's fangirls), in or out of blizzards, rain, sleet, chanting teenaged girls, and usually by foot.

He sat with at lunch and personally saw to exactly what point The Commander (as Dark called him) would avoid the troublesome burdens of making lunch by buying the same old meat buns every day (from the same vender: stale, soggy, or mysteriously burnt) and this reasoned that Hiwatari-kun was about as apt to go out of his way to do something troublesome as he was to march up to the Harada Twins and just tell them what the hell was going on with Daisuke, Dark, and Hiwatari-kun himself that led to late midnight-rendezvous around town (at midnight, in leather, which usually ended in a tussle with handcuffs and possible bruising around the neck from strangulation attempts).

Daisuke figured, in a quite methodical and completely correct manner, that the only reason Hiwatari-kun would want to be on the rooftop of a museum when it was 5 below was to catch Dark (though Dark added his own thoughts on the impact of Hiwatari-kun's lineage of "possessive, obsessive-compulsive, freakishness" and how that might fit into the matter). He must really, _really_, REALLY want to catch Dark, Daisuke considered, if he would trek through a blizzard to sit with Takeshi's father for two whole hours when Hiwatari-kun usually went out of his way to avoid Takeshi (who was a much milder version of his father, though Daisuke himself tended to avoid Takeshi especially during the hour and a half before school ended on the days that Takeshi had cleaning duty).

He had felt so guilty that he had even bought Hiwatari-kun a thermos and one of those pod-using coffeemakers; he had even, in the middle of a rather depressing guilt-trip, accidentally let Dark choose the thermos, which was why it was purple with little white bunnies and downy feathery things all over it.

Hiwatari-kun had given him a really weird look when he delivered it to his door on Christmas Morning before he slammed said door in his face and uttered a very muffled "thank you" from behind it.

It could have been his imagination, but the week after, when he had had to fly through pouring sleet to retrieve a comparatively drab necklace, Hiwatari-kun had been a bit gentler. If one really _could_ call getting kicked in the gut a "gentle" gesture. At least, he figured, Hiwatari-kun hadn't handcuffed him to anything or tried to slam him up against any walls.

You'd think it would stop being surprising after the first twenty times.

---

_So, their friendship was always a little odd. The fact that they were friends in the first place was odder, especially if one considered the fact that Hiwatari-kun still had that nasty scrape on his forehead from falling down a flight of stairs last week._

_It worked, though._

_They fought at night and loafed around, shuffling through school, in the day._

_Hiwatari Satoshi was kind of a cold bastard and a prick. Niwa Daisuke was kind of disgustingly cute, in his own way, and a little neurotic._

_But that was ok. No one seemed to really mind._

_**Fin.**_

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_Disclaimer_: DN Angel is not mine but I can dream, damn it.

_Author's Note_: In a perfect world, this bit of randomnosity would make sense. But we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a rather silly one, hence, I give you fic of penultimate silliness and a despairing sense of comedy at that. The title is rather appropriate and rather slap-dash all at once, yes? And uh… yeah, un-edited and off the top of my head, because I can.

The Hiwatari-kun of my mind fluctuates between being an angst-ridden bastard and a bit of an angst-ridden goof, which is all and all fine and well. The Niwa Daisuke of my mind is too reasonable for his own good, slightly horrified by his counter-half, and the sufferer of many-a-plan-gone-wrong which kind of leads him to be neurotic. Go figure.

I find the two combined to be disgustingly cute, because they really do bring out the best and worst in each other.


End file.
